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Bacon’s Rebellion 2: The Susquehannocks Strike Back
The Susquehannocks, having successfully escaped from their beseiged fort on Piscataway Creek in Maryland, fled through the Virginia Piedmont to set up winter quarters on the James and Roanoke Rivers. In January 1676, they launched a measured counterattack. The settlers on the frontier panicked and evacuated. Rumors of war spread. The horrors of King Philip's War loomed large, especially in the thinking of Sir William Berkeley, the governor. A fundamental debate over how to respond to those Susquehannock attacks set up the confrontation between Nathaniel Bacon and his populist - and it should be said, hard-drinking - frontiersmen on the one hand, and Berkeley and his loyalist supporters on the other. Along the way we consider Governor Berkeley's background and the experiences that shaped him, and the political challenges that he now confronted. The episode ends with Bacon's massacre of the Occaneechees (Occaneechis), heretofore allies of Virginia, on their island in the Roanoke River. Check out the new merch store! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Matthew Kruer, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia Various authors, for the National Park Service, "Mapping the Dragon:AN INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF BACON’S REBELLION" (pdf)
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41:35
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41:35
Bacon’s Rebellion 1: The Case of the Repossessed Hogs
The year is 1675, and we are in Virginia. All kinds of social, demographic, fiscal, and economic pressures have been building for decades, and the common people are restive. There have been a string of small revolts and disruptions in the years since 1660, but they all failed for lack of effective leadership. The "masterless men" in the colony needed a leader, and the leader, when he arose, would need a cause. Nathaniel Bacon, a ne'er do well son of a wealthy gentleman in English, would be that leader. He arrived in Virginia in 1674 with a fat bankroll, sent there by his father after he got in a scrape with the law. By 1675 he owned two plantations, one of them at the falls of the James River, just at the edge of Indian country. The spark that would set off the chain of events that would lead to Nathaniel Bacon stepping forward as the leader of a rebellion would be the theft of some hogs by Indians in Northern Virginia who had been stiffed for payment in an ordinary trading transaction. The English colonials would blow their response, and blunder into war. Waging that war would be Nathaniel Bacon's cause. Check out the new merch store! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Map of relevant indigenous nations c. 1675 (Credit Matthew Kruer) : Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Matthew Kruer, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon's Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia Charles McLean Andrews, Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675-1690
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36:25
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36:25
Notes on Virginia 1644-1675
We are back in Virginia, finally! In my defense, offered in response to the many listeners who have asked for "more Virginia," the thirty years before the Third Anglo-Powhatan War and Bacon’s Rebellion are almost blank spaces on published timelines of Virginia history, most noting only the legalization of slavery in 1661. Well, we are now on the brink of the civil war known as Bacon’s Rebellion, which was ramping up as the tide was turning in King Philip’s War in the spring of 1676. To understand that sorry state of affairs, however, we have to step back and look at the evolution of Virginia in the years between 1644, the onset of the last Anglo-Powhatan War, and 1675. How was it that civil war broke out among the English of Virginia during the tumultuous 1670s? This episode explores the root causes of the civil instability that led to Bacon's Rebellion, and will therefore be more thematic than narrative. Along the way we consider the severe gender imbalance in Virginia, the sorry state of indentured servants, the persistance of a brutally high death rate into the second half of the century, the relentless efforts of Virginia's great planters to control the growing population of "masterless men" who roamed the colony, and the arrival in the region of the Susquehannocks, much reduced from the peak of their power mid-century, but still a formidable military force. Check out the new merch store! X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom Matthew Kruer, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America "The Sadder But Wiser Girl For Me" (YouTube)
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43:46
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43:46
Augustine Herrman’s Map
I got the idea for this episode talking to a bartender in Prague. The place was empty, and the fellow was garrulous and quickly said he loved American history, which naturally prompted me to suggest a podcast where he could find some. The barkeep called my bluff – “did I know who Augustine Herrman was?” Uh, noooo. It turns out he was a Bohemian – now we would say Czech – from Prague who became one of the wealthiest and most influential men in mid-17th century English and Dutch America, particularly in New Netherland and Maryland. He would live and trade in the early colonies for more than 40 years before his death in Maryland in 1686, and such diverse characters as Pieter Stuyvesant and Lord Baltimore would rely on him for their most sensitive diplomatic matters. Most famously, Herrman would draw the most detailed map of the Chesapeake Bay, at a time when maps were evidence in the settling of disputes between empires. Hermann’s map would, among other things, determine the border between Virginia and Maryland on the Eastern Shore, and – through twists and turns – play a role in the establishment of the colony of Delaware. The Czechs are understandably proud of Augustine Herrman, so in gratitude to that bartender and his surprising knowledge of 17th century America, this episode is about Herrman, through the story of his map. Augustine Herrman's Map: Augustine Herrman's woodcut of New Amsterdam, mid 1650s: X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Earl L. W. Heck, Augustine Herrman: Beginner of the Virginia Tobacco Trade, Merchant of New Amsterdam and First Lord of Bohemia Manor in Maryland Christian J. Koot, "The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644–73," The William and Mary Quarterly, October 2010.
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34:28
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34:28
Sidebar Conversation: Phil Magness on The 1619 Project
Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Dr. Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute. Magness’ research has appeared in multiple scholarly venues, including the Economic Journal, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Southern Economic Journal, and Social Science Quarterly. He is the author of several books including, most recently, The 1619 Project Myth, which is the subject of this conversation. Our conversation was wide-ranging, including an overview of the original 1619 Project of the New York Times, conceived of and edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones; how it was a departure from similar historical projects of the Times before it; the strengths of the 1619 Project; the particular shortcomings of the Project’s claims about the economic consequences of slavery; the attempt by the 1619 Project to tie slavery to capitalism; the actual anti-slavery origins of capitalist theory, starting with Adam Smith; the anti-capitalism ante-bellum arguments in the philosophical defense of slavery; the flawed scholarship of the “New History of Capitalism” school; the Project’s distortion of the importance of cotton to the American economy before the Civil War, and the strange rehabilitation of “King Cotton” theory; the criticisms of leading historians of the colonial and revolutionary era of Hannah-Jones’s claims about the importance of slavery to support for the American Revolution in the South; the status of the “20 and odd” enslaved Blacks who were brought to Jamestown in 1619; the varied influence of the Sommersett ruling in the colonies; Lord Dunmore’s famous declaration after the American Revolution had begun; Hannah-Jones’s dismissive response to academic criticisms of her claims; that Hannah-Jones was correct in her assessment of Abraham Lincoln’s advocacy of “colonization” as a solution to emancipation; the New York Times’s strange unwillingness to correct its 1619 Project errors transparently, as it would otherwise do in other contexts; the explicit political and policy agenda behind the 1619 Project; the slow walking-back of some of the Project’s most controversial claims via ghost-editing; the insertion of The 1619 Project in public school curricula; and how to develop a school history curriculum that does give a balanced treatment of the history of slavery and Reconstruction. X – @TheHistoryOfTh2 – https://x.com/TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfTheAmericans Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website) Philip W. Magness, The 1619 Project Myth Nikole Hannah-Jones and other authors, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story An interview with historian James McPherson on the New York Times’ 1619 Project An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times’ 1619 Project Philip W. Magness, "The 1619 Project Unrepentantly Pushes Junk History" Jake Silverstein, New York Times Magazine, "We Respond to the Historians Who Critiqued The 1619 Project" (free link)
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1:32:39
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1:32:39